


Stardust in the Wake

by sanerontheinside



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Reincarnation, mentions of Baze Malbus, mentions of Bodhi Rook - Freeform, mentions of Chirrut Îmwe, mentions of Tarkin, really uh... not-so-good father-daughter relationship, vague mentions of graphic violence but warning placed anyway, well - technically?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 18:12:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14266740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanerontheinside/pseuds/sanerontheinside
Summary: Imagine a child who grew up her father’s Stardust—this girl who looked so much like her mother, in all but that she had her father’s eyes.Her mother, who painstakingly taught her the lessons of keeping to the shadows, keeping her words and her thoughts tight within her, deep and far and away from the Empire’s long, creeping, twisting fingers.Lyra never quite got that lesson through Galen’s skull. They were supposed to run, they were supposed to escape this nightmare, to join up with Saw and get away. But they never did. And Galen is the one to blame.





	Stardust in the Wake

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, I'd wanted to do several Rogue One Reincarnation AU's. I also didn't want to post them to Ao3 in parts, but it's been a while, and I don't see myself coming back to this and writing Bodhi's, Chirrut's, and Baze's parts, like I'd intended. 
> 
> And anyway, this one works very well as a standalone piece, I think. So here, have 5k of a really fraught father-daughter relationship behind the scenes of the biggest double betrayal, all in the family! *snerk*
> 
>  
> 
> (So far, only one RogueAU has actually stuck. I doubt it'll be ready any time soon, but I do love it very much.)

Jyn doesn’t dream. 

She never has. She wears a kyber crystal around her neck, gifted to her by her mother in a quiet press of hands— _keep it hidden, what they do not know you have is yours to keep; keep your thoughts hidden, what they do not know you think they cannot use against you_ —in the shadows where even the red colour of her scarf was eaten away by stark Imperial greys. 

Jyn was but a child, then; a child who grew up being her father's _Stardust_ , this girl who looked so much like her mother, in all but that she had her father's eyes. Her mother, who painstakingly taught her the lesson of keeping to the shadows, keeping her words and her thoughts tight within her, deep and far and away from the Empire's long, creeping, twisting fingers. Lyra never quite got that lesson through Galen's skull. They were supposed to run, they were supposed to escape this nightmare, to join up with Saw and get away. But they never did. And Galen is the one to blame. 

He didn't pay heed to Lyra's warnings. He was outspoken when he should have stayed quiet, he was bold and daring at all the wrong times. He thought he could make a difference. 

He should have listened to his wife. Instead they got a painful lesson in invisible, invincible pressure as Galen was forced to recant. Lyra never said—she never spoke another word of it. She never wanted to speak that aloud, never wanted to lay the much-deserved blame at his door. He carried it even without her words. But they were so closely watched for a long time after that, and Lyra kept swallowing her words and her fears and her hatred of the place they were trapped in, pushing it back the way you're never supposed to do, hoarding it, guarding it, keeping it back behind her teeth. 

Silence eats. It gnaws at you from the inside, consuming your secrets and grudges and wishes and never-weres. Silence eats its fill and wants more from you, more of you, begins to make you believe that Silence is all you ever needed or wanted. Is it any wonder she wasted away only a few years after their failed escape attempt? 

Is it any wonder she taught her daughter the same—to swallow her hate and her fear and keep going? 

Jyn used to think the silence had eaten her mother alive, stolen the colour from her cheeks, hollowed them out, made her eyes burn feverish. Now she knows only that the quiet fills her and surrounds her like an armour, a protective shell no one can probe through. She knows now that Krennic is a fool playing at being a friend, but a dangerous fool all the same. She discovers the twisted satisfaction in thinking this, and all the while smiling, of Krennic, of the other Imperial officers they meet. 

Jyn discovers the freedom of her thoughts does not always help her. She blames her father for her mother’s slow death. She wants to hate him for it; for his failure, for his cowardice, for his foolishness. She’s seen all of it, every iteration of his worst qualities. 

She can’t hate him for any of it. Not really. 

She still can’t forgive him. 

_Little Stardust_... it's a name Galen uses less and less now, ever since Lyra died. His daughter seems to go cold at the sound of it, so bit by bit he lets it go. 

(In his mind, she will always be his Stardust.)

But Jyn is the daughter of Galen Erso, the man who will build the Death Star. Jyn is the daughter of Lyra Erso, who knows more about rock formations and minerals and deposits and sediments on any planet, speaks more languages that the collective number of people in the room. (The Empire favours Humans anyway, it's almost an unfair comparison. Lyra will always win.) 

Jyn is quick, sharp, and bright, and she is extraordinary. She warrants a far higher standard than an Imperial Academy can offer. She warrants a prestigious, secluded University, somewhere Galen can send her away to—away from himself, from the Imperials. Somewhere removed from what he wants to do. An atonement, in Lyra’s name and memory, and for his daughter’s future. 

He sends her to Alderaan. 

Again, one might think, for a man whose loyalty to the Empire was once brought into question, this would be a dangerous statement. No one really speaks of the [underground] resistance movement on Alderaan, but Senator Organa’s silent acceptance of every Imperial edict is followed by an open, presumably clueless, smile when those edicts are gently ignored, steered clear of, shrugged off. That is Senator Organa’s resistance, silent, unimpeachable, patient as the Alderaanian mountains. No one says it, because no one has yet been able to prove it, to catch him in a lie, but everyone knows. Everyone sits, waiting like scavengers, for the fall of Alderaan and the spoils that most surely must go to them. 

Fifteen years ago Galen attempted to speak out against the Empire and was quickly convinced to recant. Krennic vouched for him then. But even now, even today, he has few friends. So: sending his daughter to Alderaan is one of the most surprising moves Galen has yet dared. 

But his explanation is honest, brutally so, and Krennic can’t really argue with Galen’s more intimate knowledge of academia. It’s politically correct to claim that Coruscant’s University is the best in the Core, but, Galen insists, it’s a travesty to send brilliant minds there to rot. Coruscant cannot compete with the strength of the programs offered by Alderaan’s schools. His Jyn deserves only the very best—‘the _honest_ best, Krennic’—and all of his esteemed former colleagues, these days not directly involved in Imperial projects, have picked up and settled there. 

Krennic hums and haws, and agrees. After all, if Jyn Erso is anything like her parents, he’ll have another brilliant mind in his arsenal. Krennic has always seen value in people, particularly people who were more gifted than he in all but social climbing.

 

* * *

 

For months, now, Jyn Erso has walked with whispers at her back, at her heels.

Alderaan’s University is supposed to be a place of enlightenment, her father always said it was. Even Krennic had agreed that Coruscant’s University was merely fashionable. It was the place to send the children of the Emperor’s favourites, but the daughter of a genius, no dull mind herself, deserved the true best that the Empire had to offer. That, her father had insisted, was on Alderaan.

But people are people no matter what world you land on, Jyn knows this. She never expected to find friends here. Nobody mentions that Alderaan is a quietly rebellious world, because Bail Organa stands before the Emperor without fear, greatly daring in doing so. In a strange way, his stoic composure had become a beacon for Jyn, a certainty she might pin her hopes on. She never expected her father’s former colleagues to support her, never expected the fledgling rebel groups of university students to like her. She joins the rebel student groups anyway, all on the strength of one Senator Bail Organa, who stands before the Emperor legally unimpeachable and protecting this homeworld with every shred of silent rebellion she can’t help but respect. Someone is bound to see her, someone is bound to tell Alliance Intelligence that Erso’s daughter is here, on Alderaan, drinking with classmates who hate her and shoot dark sideways glares her way. 

She hates how coy they are about it, though. It had been months before one of them finally said, with a twisted mouth and a fire in her eyes, “You’re everything there is to hate about the Empire. You look down your nose at the rest of us, think the world owes you something. You’re _Galen Erso’s_ daughter.”

“I know whose daughter I am,” Jyn assured her, flat-voiced and with a level stare.

_I’m the daughter of Lyra Erso, the woman who spoke to the earth and the earth spoke back to her on Jedha. The woman who tried to get my father to hold his tongue and run. Except he did not, because he was a fool._

“Your father will give them the weapon that will burn worlds,” the woman spat. “You don’t believe in the rebellion. You’re a spoiled brat who had a fallout with her father. You’re not here for the rest of us, fighting for the freedom of the oppressed. You’ve never needed to fight for anything in your life,” she hissed with finality, and with that barb, finally stepped away. 

Jyn stared at the air where she had been, numb and expressionless.

It’s an odd thing, really. When her father wanted her sent to Alderaan for the education, everyone here seemed to view it as some sort of galactic snub or punishment. _The children of the elite get sent to Coruscant._

As if she was a rebellious, tempestuous child. As if she didn’t know the monster her father was, and was no more than a spoiled brat tossed off to Alderaan to learn a lesson, who only joined the Rebellion for the attention.

As if silence didn’t choke. As if silence didn’t gnaw at you from the inside, burning a path through your stomach when you choked back your words again and again and refused to break down and scream. As if she’d never had to fight herself to tamp down the bitter anger she’d felt at the sight of her father engrossed in his work when her mother had died, died in silence, wasted away from it slowly.

She tossed back a glass of something cheap and strong, squeezed her eyes shut as she felt it burn its way down to compete with the ache inside her. She didn’t hate her father. She did hate him. She hated his cowardice, she hated his fear.

She hated that he loved her, and that made it so hard to see clearly.

Jyn had spent years in her father’s study, sometimes tagged along with him to the laboratory where they tested crystals. He’d taught her, pushed her and challenged her at every turn. She’d excelled—as was only expected of Erso’s daughter, truth be told. But she’d also, in later years, made a study of his notes on what would one day become the Death Star. He’d let her, sometimes joking that she could find a flaw where none of his engineers could, or else that she’d see something he’d missed.

Jyn had spent years figuring out, on her own, how to crack the Death Star. It was her own private hobby. No one saw her neat, cramped notes. Nobody knew what she was up to—or so she liked to think. No one had said anything, anyway. 

When her father sent her to Alderaan, he’d managed to play right into her hand. Jyn honestly hadn’t believed her luck at first. Once here, knowing all that she knew, she just had to get the attention of one of the Rebels—someone with influence. So, knowing the looks she’d get, knowing the chances of her actually finding friends were less than slim, she’d joined one of the University’s radical groups—the sort who met in the cantina in the evenings, drank themselves stupid and extolled the virtues of the Rebellion, _Fuck Palpatine, Fuck the Empire!_

Jyn smirked, darkly, sharply humourless, as one of those shouts was aimed very expressly at her, almost tossed in her face.

_Alright, so maybe I’ve never had to fight, never had to suffer. Have you?_

No. They were the bright-eyed young idealists the Rebellion would recruit. Jyn could see someone watching her—he had been, for the last week, actually. Every time she saw him now, her skin went hot and itched with impatience— _come on, come-on-come-on-come-on,_ _come_ over _here already, talk to me, ask me what it is I want. Ask me what I want from your precious Rebellion, what I can give._

But that night, when a spoiled brat had accused her of being the same, had accused her of not knowing what the Rebellion was for and using it to get to her father, Jyn almost didn’t care enough. She slammed down the empty glass, eyes still squeezed shut, and thought about marching straight to the police and drawing the plans and redrawing the calculations from memory. She remembered them so well she dreamed in those numbers and formulae now.

She almost wanted to think, _Let them die. They’re all the same everywhere and the galaxy would be better off without us in it._

They’d wiped out Geonosis, hadn’t they? And who missed those bugs now?

She wanted to slap herself for that thought. Instead she got up, a little unsteady, and walked right out into the street, into the cold fresh air that woke her right up and filled her lungs until they cramped.

Oh, she was drunk this time. She swayed, pitched dangerously—

—Was caught, hands closing on a bulky coat. She lurched sideways, retched, but somehow held herself together long enough to straighten, eyes still shut tight, and apologise to the person who’d caught her. To thank them, too, she supposed, then wander off home without opening her eyes.

The grip on her arms didn’t loosen.

“Wha—” Jyn forced herself to look. 

That same face that had watched her in the cantina, tired and half-hidden in shadows then, now loomed over her. He looked—he looked sharp and predatory and focused, like he’d caught his prey. It unnerved her. She’d seen the face of a killer before, she’d seen Tarkin often enough. She’d seen Krennic go from charming to threatening, but this—where she was suddenly the target—this she really hadn’t the chance to see yet.

It thrilled her, dangerously, like molten heat in her veins. She told herself she’d really lost it, if this was what it took to feel halfway to alive, but she also, oddly enough, didn’t care. She had the sense that defecting, or going to the Rebellion, might mean she wouldn’t live much longer. Whether it was the work of the Empire or the Rebels, she also didn’t give much of a damn. Just so long as they listened, trusted her long enough to accept the message, the vulnerability in this giant weapon. 

Almost predictably, Cassian Andor isn’t one for pleasantries. He’s not particularly interested in the story that she has to tell, either, nor in explaining why he even approached her. On her own, from his grunts and the odd expressions that flit over his face, she puts together that he’s taking her hostage to force her father to reveal a way to break apart the weapon—and she doesn’t even get a word in edgewise about what she knows before she blacks out. 

She wakes up in binders, but still on Alderaan. She can tell, even through the hangover from whatever was mixed into her drink, because the air is clear and it feels like it never had in her life. Stale, recycled, artificial, sterile Imperial air. Alderaan had been a welcome change in many more ways than the promise of telling someone what she knew. 

Cassian doesn’t seem inclined to listen. “You’re going to record a message for your father,” he tells her, like she has no choice. 

“He won’t tell you anything,” Jyn shrugs. The moment she records that message, Cassian will have even less need for her. Maybe he’ll still want her alive if her father asks to see her in person. But her father will never tell the Alliance anything. 

“He will,” Cassian says, blaster pointed lazily at her from across the room, just above the camera, at odds with his sharp eyes. “Start talking.”

“I can tell you how to destroy the Death Star,” she says, hoping blunt honestly and luck will carry her through, more than anything else. It’s not like he has any reason to trust her. “I went through all the calculations—”

“What are you talking about?” Cassian snaps. 

“I came here to join the Rebellion. I came here to tell you how to destroy the planet-killer.” 

“I have no reason to believe you.” And it’s true, he doesn’t. Everyone else seems to think she’s just doing this for attention, anyway. Then, “You could be a plant, the Empire could have sent you here.”

“For what purpose?” she tosses back in annoyance, readily baring her teeth in exasperation and disgust. Something chimes agreement in her mind—she really hadn’t thought this all the way through. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Stupid, stupid—

“Disinformation.”

_Point_. Rare point: the Empire’s not that good, she knows this, but she can see why he might think that. Damn. Sometimes inside knowledge isn’t quite a boon. 

Jyn shrugs. “The structural plans are on Scarif, in an archival base. The planet is surrounded by a security shield. Assuming you do get past it, assuming you somehow get the plans from the vault below, theoretically you could come to the same conclusion. It would take your scientists another few months to run the calculations to be sure. You don’t have months. They’re in the final stage, mining the last of the kyber on Jedha.” 

_A few months—try a year, she scolds herself internally._ Her professors are nothing like her father, colleagues of old or no. 

Cassian twitches at the mention of Jedha—to his credit, minutely, but Jyn has had to learn to read the expressions of everyone who’d been swallowed by the Empire’s silence. 

That twitch. That, she thinks, is interesting. 

Cassian leaves her alone for a few minutes without forcing her to record the message. Then he comes back, sits down calmly across from her again, and says, “The message to your father. Start talking.”

“But—”

The blaster clicks. 

Jyn keeps to the script. Then, Cassian asks her about the designs. 

He asks her about many things. He asks her about Krennic and Tarkin and a few other ranking Imperials—some of whom are no longer in the picture. (The Emperor’s inner circle is always full of turmoil. Sometimes people vanish, and not even on his order.) 

Cassian questions her about Scarif at length, and with every description his face falls more and more, stress-lines deepening around his mouth and in his brow. He should look younger than he does, Jyn thinks, impassive. What can she do? The defenses on Scarif are very good. The vault codes change every six hours, and even that implies getting past the shield to begin with. 

When he asks her about her mother Jyn clamps down on her words and says nothing. There’s nothing there to tell but bitterness. 

Her mother had wanted to run from the Empire, but if there was one thing on which she and Galen had always agreed, it was that the Alliance would gladly have strong-armed Erso into making a weapon for them, instead. Now, her daughter, her precious girl with a quick mind and a sharp eye, is selling what she knows to people who could so easily exploit it (if they came to believe her), but she has no more options. This is the end of the line, the only place left to run that can undo or prevent the horror of a planet-killer. 

Cassian leaves her alone, still bound up, sitting crosslegged on a pallet under an open window. 

She dozes off, probably. With nothing to occupy her but tired old problems and puzzles she’s either solved fifty times, or needs at least a scrap of flimsi to work on, she decides she may as well sleep off the rest of her hangover. 

Waking up is a mistake. 

_They’re here, they’re here for me, they’ve come to take me back, Cassian’s dead, the Rebellion doesn’t know, Krennic knew all along—oh gods—_

Jyn doesn’t scream at the Imperial droid when she wakes with a start. So much of her has been swallowed up in silence that she can only stare at it with eyes coming out of her skull and her throat working convulsively because that’s it, she’s finished, _they’re here._

Imperial plant, that’s what Cassian said, and, gods, the Empire’s not that clever—except what if they were? What if Cassian was an Imp and she’d spilled out all the information and implicated her father as well—

Her mind is spiralling out of control and the droid is speaking, saying something she can’t hear and it’s probably orders— _Do Not Move—Do Not Resist—You Are Under Arrest_ —and there’s something wrong about it, some odd inflection, but Jyn doesn’t care, she’s scrambling back, nails scraping bloody along the floor until she loses her balance. There’s the window over her head, if she could just get out—

She tries to pick herself up, thinking, if she could just throw herself against it—but the droid has her by the ankles and dangling head-down in the air, wriggling, absurdly, like a hooked fish. Jyn can barely hear Cassian’s voice over the rush of blood in her head. He must heard the scuffle, or maybe the droid called him, Jyn doesn’t know and doesn’t care. She’s hanging helplessly, fingers raw and bloody, hands clasping the crystal around her neck, face hot with tears and complete dismay, muttering _please please not this please anything but this._ Her throat is raw, raw like she’s been screaming, but she doesn’t remember it. She only remembers screaming in her head for years, since she was old enough to realise she didn’t have a voice in the Empire. Since she realised no one did. 

Cassian looks down at her unseeing eyes, her bleeding hands, and bends down to haul her up by the shoulders. “Down, K, put her down.” They lay her back down on the blanket and she curls into a ball, still muttering and shaking. She knows what Imperial droids do, surrenders to it while she listens to the clinical delivery of her vital signs. 

“Fear,” the droid says finally. “She is afraid.”

To hells with afraid, she’s terrified. She knows exactly what those droids were built for. 

“Jyn.” Cassian’s hand is hovering over her shoulder, like he’s afraid to touch her. “Jyn, can you hear me? You’re safe, Jyn.”

_Safe_. If she had the energy or breath to do it she might scoff at the idea. Under the Empire, there is no _safe_ , only varying degrees of disposable, for man and droid alike. Except that droids are powerful machines and they can do to soft and breakable little people the sort of things that Jyn will always see behind her eyes. All of it done with the same blasé approach as the Empire has, of cold disposal, because a droid has no feelings, only statistics and efficiency with but a single purpose: _kill_. 

_Obey_. 

Obey the order that says, ‘Kill’. 

(Like her father.)

“Me,” the droid says suddenly. 

What the hell—? 

“She is afraid of me.” The head moves, up and down, as if… confused. And then it very slightly bows. “I will go,” the droid says, vocoder twenty percent softer (and she doesn’t know how she knows that, the Imperial droids never modulated their vocorders). It unfolds its joints from the floor and stalks away, that long-legged killing-machine walk that Jyn knows too well, carrying it faster than she’s seen any Imperial droid move on its own. 

She stares after it, breath still hitching, knees still up against her chest. _Me_ , that droid had clearly said— 

“That’s Kaytoo,” Cassian says quietly. “He was reprogrammed. Side-effect is he tends to say whatever comes into his circuits.” 

It’s a quiet joke, an attempt at a distraction. It doesn’t work, but slowly Jyn unknots herself, joints and muscles aching, sharp, metallic taste in her mouth. She draws away from Cassian and huddles to the wall again, doesn’t give him her hands when he offers to help her. 

Cassian sighs. “Tell me what you know about the Death Star,” he says, leaning back against the wall beside her, but at a reassuring distance. 

“How do I know you’re not an Imperial plant?” Jyn’s voice shakes. Her hands are loosening about the crystal and she’s staring up at the ceiling, trying to stop the flow of tears. 

Cassian looks at her then, surprised more than anything. “You didn’t think of that before?”

Jyn’s lips press into a thin, anguished grimace as a fresh bloom of tears breaks free. “Too blinded by hope to think,” she stutters, half-choking on the words now. 

Cassian smiles. It’s a small thing, and it barely reaches his eyes, but it’s strangely lit with some familiarity and fondness. “Ah, but rebellions are built on hope,” he tells her. “On the hope that you could find a way to leave Imperial space, to come here, carrying all that in your head. On the hope that you would be noticed.” 

That someone would listen. Jyn gives him a water-logged, dubious look. “Trust goes both ways,” she says thickly, pointedly raising her bound wrists in the air and letting them drop again. 

None of the Imps ever bothered looking at her notes. Jyn had her own area of interest, and she wanted to continue that study at the University. She was working, so far as the faculty knew, on some abstract dissertation. Her advisors had put it down to Erso’s genes that she didn’t ask them for help. 

It serves her well, now, that she’d spent the first few months going through all the calculations again, reconstructing her careful study. The data is in her apartments, the encryption is in her head. She watches the file transmit to the Rebel base, wherever it is. 

“Now what?” 

Cassian shrugs. “I don’t know. I have no say over what they decide.”

The next time Jyn sees Kaytoo, she fights her body’s reaction, its urge for immediate flight. The droid tilts its head. “Your heart rate is 113 beats per minute. That is high.”

“Only 113? Not so bad, then,” Jyn counters. 

The head straightens, shifts back in a credible imitation of human surprise. “Yes,” Kaytoo says, almost cheerfully, “it’s an improvement. Keep working.”

 

* * *

  

The Alliance is re-checking her calculations. They’ve expressed doubts as to their completeness and veracity, which is something Cassian had warned her to expect. Jyn is unprepared for how much it still stings, standing here feeling so small before the eyes of a remote committee projected on-screen in the living room of a safehouse she hasn’t left in days. 

 

* * *

 

Bail Organa presses a kiss to his daughter’s forehead. “Look for Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine, Lelila. I fear he is our only hope,” he says. 

(He lies. It’s Leia, Leia who is his one greatest hope, but only Ben can really teach her what she needs to know.)

* * *

 

They’ve finally worked out a plan of action. Jyn is relieved to hear it. If she thought the Imperial Senate was bad, at least laws were signed into existence, not argued over and bartered for with scraps over one large table. 

They have a plan for destroying the Death Star. That in itself is a relief. 

 

* * *

 

She stumbles out of the safehouse, finally free—or as free as Cassian will allow, which means either he or Kaytoo are shadowing her on this walk. The night air is cool, a relief on her face and stinging eyes and weary bones. Jyn suddenly wants to go home, home to an embrace in her father’s arms. She feels achy and empty, having lived over a year without even that comfort; comfort she hadn’t wanted while she lived on Imperial Center. Suddenly she’s brought low but the crippling thought that she is, really, just her father’s little girl, his little Stardust, and that nothing she’s done will ever change that. 

Jyn stumbles, stops, sits down heavily on a nearby set of steps and stares up at the night sky, thinking she’ll just sit here and breathe, and nothing else. The moon looks lovely, the way it hasn’t looked on any of the worlds she and her father had been stationed on. 

Jyn thinks about this. Something is wrong there, and it sends a chill through her that she cannot yet name. 

On the heels of that chill comes a vision, Force-bourne, of possibilities: of a world where she and Cassian and Kaytoo, and an Imperial pilot and two survivors from Jedha come together through a series of lucky accidents; a world where her father deliberately worked a flaw into the Death Star and pinned his last hope on his daughter to find it. 

She sees another path, another tangle of possibilities, where the Alliance ‘rescued’ her father and asked the same of him. 

Jyn gasps, pulling air into cramped lungs and staring up at the sky in numb horror. 

_That’s no moon,_ she thinks. Jyn thinks of the brave pilot whom she never got a chance to meet, of the two Guardians of the Whills, souls so closely entwined that everything about them moved in synchrony—if with the odd exasperated huff. 

Jyn spares a prayer to the Force that they might somehow have been spared this fate—them, and all of NiJedha, though it’s difficult to imagine how. 

_Of all the supreme ironies,_ she has a chance to think half-bitterly. Her father had made this critical flaw his life’s work, and sought to remove his daughter from the Empire’s grasp before the weapon’s completion. He’d sent her here thinking only of her safety, and she’d come here with the plans to lay the Empire to waste. What had drawn Krennic to Alderaan? Was it her meddling? 

Jyn winces, and grieves. But not just for her mistakes, not for friends who may or may not be alive. She grieves for the years she wasted with her father. Every moment, every word, every gesture suddenly seems a hint, and Jyn shuts her eyes against the flow of all those memories—because nothing lies that way but pain. Regret, though, doesn’t quite leave her alone. 

Cassian runs up to her just as she sees bright light stream down to the atmosphere and pierce the horizon. He looks horrified, and Jyn can’t stand to see that look on his face—not now. She tugs on his sleeve and pulls him down into a tight embrace. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Things I'd originally planned for the other RO characters: They’re all fine, which is kind of remarkable for this au, but yes—they all survived, even evacuated NiJedha. 
> 
> Also: it’s not Galen who convinced Bodhi to defect this time, it’s Bodhi who talks to Galen and pushes him over that last edge.  
> I have a very particular headcanon for Bodhi's role, but— _shh, spoilers._


End file.
